Books are not life, only its ashes.

Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul.

The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.

Love is a punishment. We are punished for not having been strong enough to remain alone.

Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.

Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.

I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.